"He was not an albino. He was quite different." He sipped his wine. "And he was
riding an iron horse. The first people who saw him ran away, but he stood beckoning to
them. In the end the fearless ones went near and even touched him. The elders consulted
their Oracle and it told them that the strange man would break their clan and spread
destruction among them." Obierika again drank a little of his wine. "And so they killed
the white man and tied his iron horse to their sacred tree because it looked as if it would
run away to call the man's friends. I forgot to tell you another thing which the Oracle
said. It said that other white men were on their way. They were locusts, it said, and that
first man was their harbinger sent to explore the terrain. And so they killed him."
"What did the white man say before they killed him?" asked Uchendu.
"He said nothing," answered one of Obierika's companions.
"He said something, only they did not understand him," said Obierika. "He
seemed to speak through his nose."
"One of the men told me," said Obierika's other companion, "that he repeated
over and over again a word that resembled Mbaino. Perhaps he had been going to
Mbaino and had lost his way."
"Anyway," resumed Obierika, "they killed him and tied up his iron horse. This
was before the planting season began. For a long time nothing happened. The rains had
come and yams had been sown. The iron horse was still tied to the sacred silk-cotton
tree. And then one morning three white men led by a band of ordinary men like us came
to the clan. They saw the iron horse and went away again. Most of the men and women
of Abame had gone to their farms. Only a few of them saw these white men and their
followers. For many market weeks nothing else happened. They have a big market in
Abame on every other Afo day and, as you know, the whole clan gathers there. That
was the day it happened. The three white men and a very large number of other men
surrounded the market. They must have used a powerful medicine to make themselves
invisible until the market was full. And they began to shoot. Everybody was killed,
except the old and the sick who were at home and a handful of men and women whose
chi were wide awake and brought them out of that market." He paused.